MUMBAI: Amid a once-in-a-century pandemic that has forced employees to work from home across the world, global investment firm Fidelity International has launched a dynamic policy that offers its workforce the option to choose the location and timing of their office hours as a permanent move.
The latest initiative adds on to a suite of recently announced employee benefits including family care leaves and enhanced parental leaves as the pandemic has forced the world indoors from last year.
The dynamic work policy comes into force immediately and offers the flexibility to balance home and office working, Fidelity International, which handles over US $700 billion in clients' assets, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The biggest beneficiary market will be India as Fidelity employs about 3,200 here, more than a third of its total global workforce of 9,000.
"Dynamic working means that the majority of our employees will have the flexibility in managing their own working patterns -- flexibility in where they work from and flexibility in when they work," Fidelity's Global Chief Executive Anne Richards said.
Although some of the roles are location-dependent or require pre-defined hours, which are driven primarily by client needs, this new way of working aims to give the employees as much flexibility as possible, she said.
Richards added that its offices across the world will become centres of community, collaboration, creativity and learning.
"Over the course of the past year, many things have changed in our daily lives and one of those is the way we work. We've learned that we can adapt brilliantly as individuals and as teams and run our business in a way that we never imagined possible," she said, adding that the new employee policy is based on the feedback from their workforce.
Having satisfied employees leads to satisfied clients so we believe this is a real and positive step and a change for our people, our clients and our business.
It is also an iterative process and we will continue to listen, learn and build on our experience from the last year, she added.
The privately-held Fidelity International has been offering investment solutions and services and retirement expertise to over 2.5 million customers for over 50 years and operates in over 25 countries.
Its customers include central banks, sovereign wealth funds, large corporates, financial institutions, insurers and wealth managers, apart from private individuals.